


Cyclical

by moodiful819



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, F/M, Past Relationship(s), Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-16
Updated: 2015-02-16
Packaged: 2018-03-13 04:26:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3367784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moodiful819/pseuds/moodiful819
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She never wanted this to happen. She didn't want to be known as "that girl" who dates through her entire team. But fate has a funny sense of humor, and Sakura has a funny sense of love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cyclical

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Could You Choose Me?](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/98597) by mofmofmofo. 



The first time it happened, Sakura was leery.

It was only a year after the war and when Sasuke asked to speak with her privately, there was a gut instinct to be giddy. The trail of her initial love had never gone cold, but she had learned how dark and twisted the road could be, both in him and her.

Still, Sasuke was a friend, a soul she had desperately attempted to save, and she knew embedded in that perfunctory tone and those oddly halting words was love.

So she said yes naturally, and hoped for the best despite her doubts, even as she felt them seed in her stomach.

* * *

The second time it happened, Sakura was… happy.

It had been a few months after she and Sasuke had broken up that Naruto asked her out. Much like she had been with Sasuke, the ardor he felt for his first love had never gone out. It had never occurred to him the potential awkwardness of this entanglement, though she could feel Sasuke’s lingering, vaguely accusing stares at her from across the field.

They had parted on good terms, she felt. It was a mutual feeling, but Sakura was finding out that feelings came in all shapes and sizes and “mutual” could be one of them. 

She told Naruto this could be potentially disastrous. Warning him was only fair, but he ignored the verbal caution tape. To him, love was still a simple boy-meets-girl story, and she couldn’t help but laugh and feel refreshed at that mentality, even as she felt a guilty pang at her comparison. Her relationship with Sasuke, though never awful or violent like some had hoped and gossiped, felt like she had been smothered in cobwebs of death and decay. She could never be sure whether it was love or a slow submission to an end she had agreed to, and it left her always slightly on edge.

Naruto, on the other hand, was transparent to a fault. She would always know where she stood with him, and vulnerable and relieved, she told him she would meet him at 8 after all.

That was years ago, and since then, there had been many “times,” many people, many dates. She stopped keeping track; she barely bothered to remember the names anymore. It was why her last relationship ended, just an hour ago. She’d said the wrong name for the nth time in three months. It was rude; it was horrible of her, she knew, but in the pit of her stomach and on the surface of her skin, she could not bring herself to care. She was tired, so very tired of it all.

What she must have looked like to Kakashi when she stumbled upon him in the training field, she didn’t know. She hadn’t realized the field had been occupied, but then again, she hadn’t tried very hard to read the sign on her way in. She just wanted to leave the hospital, walk, and forget there was anything to worry about other than work or what was under her feet. 

But when what was under her feet was Kakashi, she immediately began to vent to him. She told herself it was his fault. He invited this upon himself by saying “Yo” to her (as if that was ever a green light for such a thing), but social graces were beyond her at this point. She just wanted to purge.

Graciously, patient as he always was with her whenever they saw each other, he listened and watched quietly as Sakura sank down into the grass, squatting on her haunches with her hands buried in her hair.

"I’m sick of all of this. Dying alone would be better at this rate," she sighed, though both of them knew that wasn’t true. Sakura hated being alone; Kakashi knew no one would ever let her be.

Casting a glance at her former teacher, she shuffled guiltily. “Sorry,” she murmured, “I just… I feel like I keep making the wrong choices.”

Chin tilted up to the sky, they both surveyed the seemingly long, yet decidedly brief history of her relationships in their minds, each as short-lived and unsatisfying as the last. Even her relationship with Naruto had ended wrong. The same effulgence he radiated suffocated her as if she had been choked by the sun.

When she felt the tears prick at the edges of her eyes, she abruptly stood. “Sorry. I don’t know why I keep telling you these things. You probably don’t want to hear it—especially that one time when Sasuke  _and_  Naruto wanted to get back together with me at the same time,” she remembered, acutely embarrassed and heartbroken. The fact that they both obviously loved her made it worse. The fact she was in love with neither of them made it _the_ worst.

She shook her head against the tears. “Kami,  _this sucks,_ " she fumed, expecting to find Kakashi nodding his head sagely. Instead, he was leisurely looking up at her, his eyes never leaving her face.

"So why don’t you choose me?" He said this as if he had all the time in the world nestled gently in his palm. "What have you got to lose?"

Immediately, the terms flashed before her eyes, angry and blinding:  _friend, former teacher, instructor, mission leader, authority figure, confidante, pal…_  The foundation blocks of their relationship continued to stack, mounting a wall between them.

So why did she feel the urge to keep moving?

"I won’t hold you to anything. We’ll stop when you want to stop, no questions asked," he offered casually, but she felt the words rattle deep into her bones and nestle in her marrow and inhaled sharply, her lungs uncharacteristically convulsing around the nothingness in her chest. Despite having heard what he said, her mind was strangely blank. She had never considered the idea before and now wasn’t quite sure to say, though every cell vibrated in contrary, as if her very DNA knew what would happen next—had always known what would happen next.

With an oddly quavering voice, she spoke.


End file.
